7 Things I Don’t Do

Each time you visit my blog, my goal is for you to find ways to live with more purpose, simplicity, and balance. Earlier today, I was browsing Andrea Dekker’s site (love her blog, check it out if it’s new to you!) and saw her list of 10 Things I Don’t Do.

I love personal development.  Through this blog you get a glimpse into my life: what I am doing, learning, and how I’m growing.  You see the areas of life that I’m trying to develop such better exercise habits and sticking to a budget.  This blog in many ways is how I navigate the many “how to’s” in life.

After reading Andrea’s list, I thought it would be fun to share my own list of Things I don’t do because no one can do everything!  That’s why prioritizing is so important!  If we spent all of our time on the mundane chores of life, we’d never have time for the good stuff: spending time with our family, pursuing hobbies, focusing on self-care and enjoying nature.   Without the good stuff, life is pretty boring!

Here’s my personal list of 7 Things I don’t do:

• Work outside the home!

  • I feel very blessed to be able to choose to be home.  I always dreamt of being a career woman but I also dreamt of having a big family.  I admire and appreciate moms who work outside the home and moms who work at home.  At this point staying home, helping Jason with the farm, and being a mom is what I feel called to do and I’m lucky to be able to do that.

• Run to several stores to get the best sale prices or play the drug store game.

  • I used to do this.  I don’t anymore.  I still feel the rush of when I save half of what I spent on groceries by scoring great deals and using coupons.  At this point though, my priorities have shifted and my interests have changed.  I also have realized that even though I don’t work outside the home (see #1) my time is still valuable and the hour I’d spend running from store to store costs me in time (and gas).

• Drink wine!

  • Deep confession here: I can’t stand the taste of wine.  It takes me back to being 10 years old during Catholic Holy Communion drinking that nasty wine and sharing spit with lots of people (small church before they did the wine in the little cups).  Maybe I need serious help here, almost all of my friends love a good bottle, it’s just not something I can get into!  Maybe I need a wine mentor?!  🙂

• Spend much time with friends.

  • Jason and I are both homebodies by nature.  We are in a season of life where we have a lot of activities going on with the kids and when we have the opportunity to stay home, we are thrilled.  (We are also lucky that many of the activities the kids take part in, our friends have kids in those activities, too.)  I love our friends dearly and enjoy each time we get together but they “get” us and I’m thankful for that!

• Keep up with the Jones’s.

  • I’m not sure if it has to do with the fact that I have 5 kids and barely have time to brush my hair most days or if it just that I don’t care but I don’t have any desire to keep up with anybody.
  • Don’t get me wrong, I like my stuff (and have far more than I should), but when it comes to my friends and other people, I could care less about their stuff (although I’m happy for them that they have it).  I have no desire to get a new couch because someone else did or buy a new car because someone else got one.  Competition over who has what or who is going where exhausts me and I want nothing to do with it.

• Scrapbook.

  • I’m laughing as I type this because what I really should have said was print out pictures!  I’m not proud of this but 99.9% of my family’s photos are being stored digitally.  So not only do I not scrapbook, I barely have any photos printed of my family (although the very few photos that are printed are in frames being displayed).

There are many more things that I don’t do that I could add to this list (have a spotless home, have a closet full of name brand clothes, eat as healthy as I should, and cook every meal from scratch, just to name a few!)  The point of my list isn’t that yours should match mine, it’s that we should all choose what we do based off our priorities, season of life, and other factors that are unique to us.

What things are on your own “I Don’t Do” list?